Tally switched off her hand tool. The tendrils withdrew and curled themselves back into a knot of metal. She squinted as she tried to peek inside the case’s opening. A gleam was all she could make out in her helmet lights.
Drake couldn’t keep silent any longer. “What were these cases being—”
“One moment,” came the reply. “Gamble, give me a hand here.”
Drake tried to read the woman’s eyes before Gamble’s back obscured the view. For a split second, she looked hungry with anticipation. Then it slipped into a neutral expression that would’ve served her well at a poker table.
Together, Gamble and Tally jammed fingers into the container’s open gap. A grunt from the salvage chief as he pulled one way, his boss the other.
A snap-crack! as the lid gave way and the case split completely apart.
Gamble fell back a step, and then looked down at his feet. Drake and his bridge crew looked on in amazement as the cascade of palm-sized golden chips flowed out of the wrecked container, burying the salvage chief’s feet up to his ankles.
The golden chips were brightly polished and stamped on one side with a design. Tally took a shaky breath, as if in great rapture or pain. She plunged her hand into the pile and then held one of the chips up to the light. Tally’s hand, which had been rock steady when she had set off the booby trap on the hull, now shook with excitement.
Imprinted on the crude gold chip were the images of a cross and a roaring lion. Under the two images, a single line of words had been hammered into the metal. Tally’s voice wavered like a child reciting a difficult piece of poetry as she read the inscription.
“Signati sub sigillo, Regis Carlos Quintus,” she whispered. “That’s Latin. It means that this coin was minted for King Carlos the Fifth.”
Gamble snatched up one of the coins at his feet and squinted at it. “I can’t read Latin, boss. But I do know my numbers, it this says it was minted in 1525. Sweet Jesus, don’t that make this…”
“Yes,” Tally confirmed, her voice dry, her eyes glittery with excitement. “We’ve just found a real-life stash of Spanish gold doubloons.”
* * *
The small ship hung high above the orbital plane, hanging in the darkness like a spider upon its thread. Her captain watched the salvage operation on his tactical screen like a hunter with a twelve-prong buck in his sights. He was very good at his job, and he thought in terms of traps. There were six other men on board. Five were suited up, armed, and ready to disembark on a given signal. The remaining man was their navtech, and he spoke with a low, expectant voice.
“I have one beauty of a shot on that big sloop.”
“Nothing doing. We want whatever they find on that derelict intact. Orders are orders.”
The captain touched the tactical screen with a finger.
“Drop the decoy here. It should keep them busy for a while. Then bring us into the Belt over here.” He traced an elegant arc around to the rear quarter of the Margarita. “That salvage sloop might be armed, but not as well as the patrol vessel.”
He paused and looked at the screen, smiling.
They’d never know what hit them.
* * *
Drake silenced the exclamations from his crew, though he couldn’t help but feel his own heart rate quicken at the sight of treasure. Tally and Gamble were able to open three other containers, each filled to the brim with ancient Spanish coins. If the rest of the containers in the rack held similar amounts, it would be one of the richest hauls of antiquities in recent history.
Tally held up a glittering handful of the coins, her face beaming. “There are collectors and museums back home that’ll pay almost anything for these. Now, if we could only figure out why this ship was transporting—”
“Captain!” The cry came from the Ranger’s navtech. “We’ve got an unknown ship approaching, mark one-five-nine.”
“Hail them!” Drake snapped.
The navtech shook his head after a moment. “No reply. They’re coming on fast!”
Captain Drake tapped a button on the console by his chair. His voice echoed through the small ship’s three decks like an echo inside a tin can.
“All crew, to battle stations! Bring us about, get our weapons on-line.”
He cursed himself for being drawn into Tally’s find. Felt the adrenaline pulse in his veins. A flush of anticipation sharpened his focus to a laser-sharp point. There was no way that this ship’s approach was coincidental to Tally’s find.
In the silence of space, the Ranger overcame her inertia and swung around to a new heading. Drake rattled off a series of commands as she did so.
“Tactical!”
“One ship confirmed,” the navtech reported. “Unknown make and class.”
“Weapons hot yet?”
“Loading forward tubes…” A pause as the lights on the navtech’s console turned a reassuring green. “Ready to fire.”
“Hold at twenty thousand meters. Let’s not provoke them into firing if we can help it.” Drake turned his attention to the communication’s channel one last time. “Tally, get yourself out of there, now!”
“Without our haul? You’re out of your mind!”
Drake cast about for a way to persuade this stubborn woman. “We’ve got an enemy ship out here, and it may fire on us. A nearby explosion could jar your sloop out of alignment with the derelict. There hasn’t been enough time to calibrate the magnetic field, has there?”
There was a pause. “All right, we’ll pull out with whatever we can carry.”
“Glad you see it my way,” Drake said grimly. He muted the comm channel with an annoyed flick of a button. “Is the enemy ship within range?”
The navtech gritted his teeth. “Yes, but I can’t get a lock on anything.”
“Ready a full spread of torpedoes. Stand by.”
The tiny drone ship continued to approach the Ranger, oblivious to all the commotion it had caused. From beneath its low-slung fuselage, a pair of catches opened, releasing its single missile. The weapon’s computer brain called up the attack program. The rear of the cigar-shaped weapon blazed into chemical flame and hurtled towards the patrol vessel.
“Missile incoming, starboard!” came the cry.
“Evasive action to—” was all Drake got out.
The explosion rocked the small patrol ship, tearing a narrow gash in the hull. Emergency force fields flickered to life over the breach, stopping the flood of oxygen into space. Alarms rang shrilly above the creak and snap of crumpling metal. The bridge lit up with a bloody scarlet glow from the warning screens.
Captain Drake hung on as the bridge lurched sharply to the left. A sharp pain lanced down his side as the ship rolled, and the internal gravity field whined in response, trying to compensate. Consoles exploded in a shower of sparks from the navigation and communication boards. The smell of charred plastic mixed with eye-stinging mist as chemical jets sprinkled the bridge in flame retardant powder, smothering the sparks that threatened to turn into full-fledged fires.
Drake staggered to his feet. A trickle of blood ran down his left arm, which felt numb from the shoulder down. He clapped a hand over the wound and shouted over the din on the bridge, “Give me a damage report!”
The bridge crew leapt into action.
“Hull breach in the lower compartment!”
“Main power out; switching to auxiliary and to the emergency batteries.”
The Captain let their words wash over him. Felt a slight jolt of relief. They still had power, life support, and weapons.
He kept his voice even. “Target the ship out there, full spread.”
No reply from his navtech. The man slumped over his smoldering console, unconscious or worse. Drake didn’t hesitate: he leapt from his seat and found the button he wanted on the navtech’s station.
The ship shuddered as the torpedoes streaked out across the viewscreen, billowing outward on white streams of propellant towards the stationary target. Its job completed, the automated d
rone sat silently, disintegrating with a violent flash as the Ranger’s weapons found their target.
A cheer rose from the remaining bridge crew. Their captain didn’t join them.
That attack was meant to draw us off, he thought.
Drake turned to his communications technician. “Get Doc Kincaid up here, we’ve got wounded. And patch me into one of those salvage sloops!”
The technician gave his captain a pained look. “Our inter-ship array is damaged. We can’t send, only receive.”
“Are you getting anything from either sloop?”
“Yes…they’re under attack.”
Drake cursed. It would take several minutes to bring his damaged ship completely around on auxiliary power.
Until then, Tally would be on her own.
* * *
The enemy vessel emerged from the dusty blackness of the Belt and fired into the Atocha at point-blank range. The small sloop spun out of control. Her hull came apart in a soundless flash, flinging metal and human debris into the blackness of space.
Tally and Gamble staggered under the combined weight of a half-dozen cases of gold doubloons. The crew aboard the Margarita continued to trade shots with the approaching raider, trying to buy time for the two explorers. Together, they began to stumble across the swaying transport tube. The passage rocked back and forth from nearby explosions.
“The tube can’t hold tight much longer,” Gamble panted, as they neared the halfway point.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Tally, her faceplate streaked with sweat. “If they had wanted to take out the Margarita, they could have done it long ago. She’s a sitting duck right now.”
A snort of disbelief. “Was that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Hey, you just have to look at the bright side of things.”
A stray missile shot past the transport tube and smashed into the asteroid below. The impact gouged a huge crater out of the dense rock. Stony splinters from the expanding ring of debris slashed ragged holes in the transport tube. The tube kinked and buckled, sending the cases of gold coins flying. The bucking floor of the tube flung Tally against the Margarita’s outside hatch. Her spacesuit’s helmet cushioned her head, but the blow staggered her. Groggy, she grasped the levers that controlled the transport tube and pulled herself upright.
“Bastards damn near broke my neck—” she began.
Her voice died in her throat. Just inches behind her, the transport tube had been shredded through with man-sized holes. Scraps of Salvage Chief Gamble’s suit floated only a few feet away. Globs of blood and flesh were all that remained of the man.
“Dear God…” she croaked out.
Her suit’s headset crackled to life as her communications technician came on line.
“Boss, we’re gettin’ a transmission from the attacking ship.”
Tally’s eyes narrowed as she replied, “Patch them through to me.”
She heard a curiously dispassionate voice speak to her from the attacking ship.
“Salvage sloop Margarita,” stated the voice, “stand down and prepare to be boarded.”
“Who the hell is this?” she demanded, as the shadow of the enemy ship slid across her field of vision.
Her question was ignored. “Margarita, we repeat: stand down and prepare to be boarded.”
Tally’s voice became low, feral. She took the transport tube release lever and held it in a death grip.
“Now, you better listen to me. No one has ever taken anything from me while I was alive and conscious to prevent it. And you sons-of-bitches just took my friend, Bill Gamble. Now, the universe has been kind to me today. It so happens that I’ve got a release lever here ready to break a magnetic circuit that runs through the two ships. If I throw it, the wreck blows and you get to visit the afterlife on the group rate. So you had better stand down until that patrol ship picks you up.”
A pause. “You’re bluffing. You could easily blow yourself up as well.”
“I’m going to give you five seconds to decide if I’m bluffing or not.”
The cruiser came to a halt, halfway between the Margarita and the derelict ship’s engine compartment.
“One,” she began. “Two.”
The enemy ship’s outer hatch opened. Tally could see suited figures inside, armed and holding grappling tools.
“Three. Four…”
“You won’t do it!”
“Like hell I won’t.”
Tally slammed the lever down. The shredded transport tube retracted, breaking the contact.
She heard a sizzling sound echo from deep within the derelict.
And the entire mass of the wrecked ship lit up like the sun!
A great chunk of the asteroid vanished in a white hot fireball. The two ships were tossed out from its center like metal toys caught in a maelstrom. Tally felt the deck plates bend and stretch beneath her as the Margarita rolled with the shock wave. The enemy vessel rolled to one side. Its dark hull buckled in the force of the blast, and the ship came apart.
Tally felt a vague, distant pain in her head. She fought to stay conscious as what was left of the transport tube snapped and waggled like a ragged umbilicus along the battered side of her ship.
The last thing she saw before blackness enveloped her was the shattering of her treasure cases and the doubloons streaming into deep space in a sparkling shower of gold.
Chapter Three
“If you’d lie still, it wouldn’t hurt as much.”
Drake’s voice came out in a harsh growl from behind clenched teeth. “Dammit, Kincaid! You’re a sadist at heart!”
The medtech ignored him for the moment as he continued to probe the wound with a determined look, intent on removing the last pieces of shrapnel from his captain’s upper arm.
“A sadist is someone who intentionally inflicts pain on others, something I’d never do,” countered Kincaid. He tossed a piece of bloody metal into the pan with a rattle. “Besides, you’re the one who didn’t want the anesthetic.”
“Not when we’re still out of range of any help. And unable to call for backup. So don’t press your luck when it comes to working on me like this again.”
Kincaid shrugged. “Luck? What is ‘luck’ to the physician assigned to the Terran Home Guard? I doubt I’ll be seeing much luck with this crew. More shrapnel in warm bodies, yes. Luck, I doubt.”
“Ever the pessimist. Why don’t we have more folks like you?”
“We’re a limited series, Captain. And I doubt the market would bear many more.” He deftly pulled out the last piece of metal and began sealing the wound.
Kincaid was a graying, slightly built man with an attitude that constantly hovered somewhere between healthy cynicism and fatalism. Despite his outward lack of concern for the comfort of his patients, he was the most meticulous and precise medtech Drake had ever seen. Morale on the Ranger was always stubbornly high. Kincaid claimed it was because his presence always made someone realize that their outlook on life was much more pleasant.
“I’m having some difficulty with a patient,” Kincaid’s junior medtech called.
“One moment, Captain,” Kincaid said. He walked over to where a crewman lay propped up on one of the medlab tables and surveyed the patient gravely.
“It hurts, I don’t want you to touch it,” moaned a young ensign. The man guarded his wounded leg, rocking back and forth mechanically.
“Battle shock,” the junior medtech explained. “His profile includes an allergic reaction to sleep mist.”
“So? Give him an injected topical.”
“He’s too active, and he struggles when I get near the leg.”
Kincaid sighed, then placed a hand on the young crewman’s shoulder.
“Son, you’ve got to let us fix that leg.”
“I don’t want you to,” came the flat reply.
“Suit yourself,” said the medtech, shrugging. “We’ll have to amputate.”
“Amputate?” Drake saw the first reaction on the
ensign’s face.
“It’ll be quick; I’ll promise you that.” Kincaid reached over and squeezed the man’s good leg appreciatively. “We’ll make the first incision above the knee.”
“But...but that leg’s not the one...”
“So what? We’ll make it a two-for-one special. Bone saw!” The young crewman’s eyes widened as the instrument was slapped into the medtech’s palm. The bone saw made a teeth-clenching whine as Kincaid switched it on.
The ensign’s eyes rolled back in his head. He fell on the table with a heavy thump.
Kincaid switched the saw off and turned to the junior medtech.
“He’s all yours.”
Drake eyed his medtech evenly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were having fun.”
“I never have fun on duty, Captain.”
Drake snorted at that. “What about the rest of the crew?”
“Six injuries, including you, and Laughing Boy,” Kincaid jerked a thumb at the sedated crewman. “Our navtech’s the only one who’s badly hurt. Had to put him in the med pod until we get back to Earth.”
That’s a third of my crew down, thought Drake.
“I’ve only got one casualty to report, but it’s a big one,” said a husky female voice. A woman with dark hair, olive skin, and bulging forearms pushed her way into the medlab. She dropped a thick section of cable on the table next to the captain. “That’s our main power coupling. Shot right through.”
“Ferra, I want that out of my medlab now!” Kincaid flared.
“Hold it,” said Drake. “Lieutenant, if the coupling is severed, how are we going to re-start the main drive?”
Ferra shrugged. “We can’t. I’ve had to jerry-rig the auxiliary drive’s energy conduit directly into the engine. Sloppy, but it works. We should be able to make it back to Mars orbit by tomorrow, 1600 hours. From there, even the short-range scanners will pick us up. They’ll send out a tug to get us back into Earth orbit, where I can do real repairs to the break there. End of problem.”
“Not bloody likely,” muttered Kincaid.
Drake gingerly pulled on his field jacket, trying his best to avoid moving his arm above the elbow. “Interesting. What are the odds that a single torpedo hit would hit the compartment with the coupling?”
Treasure of the Silver Star Page 2